The heritability of vocal tract structures estimated from structural MRI in a large cohort of Dutch twins.

ABSTRACT: While language is expressed in multiple modalities, including sign, writing, or whistles, speech is arguably the most common. The human vocal tract is capable of producing the bewildering diversity of the 7000 or so currently spoken languages, but relatively little is known about its genetic bases, especially in what concerns normal variation. Here, we capitalize on five cohorts totaling 632 Dutch twins with structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data. Two raters placed clearly defined (semi)landmarks on each MRI scan, from which we derived 146 measures capturing the dimensions and shape of various vocal tract structures, but also aspects of the head and face. We used Genetic Covariance Structure Modeling to estimate the additive genetic, common environmental or non-additive genetic,

SUBMITTER: Dediu D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9672028 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature